Friday evening was spent with our nearest EU neighbour, the Republic of Ireland. As a rule the week ends with a dinner which is quick and easy to make and has sufficient heft to soak up the evening’s drinking. Boxty ticks all those boxties.
Brunch
A celebration of Europe #7 – Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country comprising the Jutland Peninsula and numerous islands. It’s linked to nearby Sweden via the Öresund bridge. Denmark is considered to be one of the most economically and socially developed countries in the world. The country ranks as having the world’s highest social mobility, a high level of income equality and the lowest perceived level of …
Laugeneck
Along with the pretzel pre-injected with butter, the Laugeneck has been one of the more innovative baked-goods finds from our many visits to the bakeries of Berlin. This triangle of loveliness is essentially a cunning hybrid of croissant and pretzel, taking the chewy butteriness of the former and encasing it in the salty crunch of the latter. Unusually for Yumblog, …
Fried egg, avocado and chilli tacos
Want to start your weekend with a lime zest and a chilli zing? Then look no further than this curious and surprisingly delicious Mexican inspired egg-based brunch. Arriba! Arriba! Andale! Andale!
Moroccan chickpea stew with fried egg brik & cucumber salad
Now that interesting looking critter below is called a brik and is essentially an egg dropped into the middle of a sheet of filo which is then wrapped up and shallow fried. It comes accompanied by a spicy chickpea curry and a refreshing cucumber and coriander salad. Service not included. Not only is this a dainty dish to set before …
Cheesy sweet potato & kale brunch
As the snow fell on Yumblog Cottage thoughts turned to sledging and comfort food.
Baked spinach & eggs with parmesan, basil & tomato toasts
Depending on the time of day, this dish makes a great brunch, brinner, brea, brupper or supfast.
Baked beans #4
In lieu of having anything (interesting) to write about baked beans, here are a few words/phrases and accompanying definitions from Yumblog Junior’s ever increasing personal lexicon: Circle ham – German sausage Rainbrella – Umbrella Yellow people – The Simpsons Oop sake – For fuck’s sake! Ah, the things they say!
Cheese & spinach brunch
The original source of this recipe was the excellent ‘Abel & Cole Cookbook’ – currently given away free with a month’s trial of their veg boxes. They called it something along the lines of ‘Baked spinach with cheesy weezy wosty eggy wegs’ – a little twee and Belle and Sebastian for comfort – hence the renaming. Preparation time: 5 minutes …
Sweetcorn fritters
A while back we bought a bumper pack of frozen sweetcorn for Yumblog Junior hoping this might make a healthy addition to her somewhat restricted and monotonous diet. As is invariably the case she gave our offering a glance of contempt, shook her head and returned to her preferred menu of bananas, Marmite and toothpaste. Parenthood can sometimes be a …
Fried polenta with mushrooms and Gorgonzola
We like a bargain here at Yumblog Cottage, so when we spied the veg stall at Todmorden Market selling large boxes of portobello mushrooms for the VERY reasonable price of two quid, we couldn’t resist. They proved to be the frugal basis of three meals – this, a tasty cream of mushroom soup (recipe in the queue), and a disappointing …
Grumbeerekiechle au Chevre Chaud…
…or potato pancakes with toasted goat’s cheese. Or indeed rosti with toasted goat’s cheese. But another Alsatian dish anyway.
Piedmontese peppers
…and talking of Simon Hopkinson, this week’s episode of TGC featured two vegetable dishes which looked so simple and tasty we knew we had to try them out here at Yumblog Towers. The first was this roasted pepper and tomato dish which if you cook nothing else between now and the world’s end (August 2012), cook this. It is astoundingly …
Tomato and cumin soup (avec egg)
With the weekend Guardian scattered over floor and table, Adam and Joe on 6Music and Yumblog Junior playing happily and noisily within the Tachyon beam containment field, few meals are more eagerly anticipated here at at Yumblog Towers than Saturday brunch… and few dishes have endorsed that anticipation with more spicy gusto than this delicious tomato and cumin ‘soup’. The …
Œufs brouillés au fromage de chèvre
… or scrambled eggs with goat’s cheese. If you want a different more goaty way to scramble your eggs, this is the recipe for you.
Shakshuka
There are some recipes you can taste just by reading them. This was one such recipe and it read delicious.
Baked Beans on Toast
Relax, these are obviously middle-class baked beans which involve overnight soaking, an hour and a half in the oven and plenty of extra virgin olive oil.
Mushroom, Spring Greens & Lincolnshire Poacher Toasts
It’s finals week and MasterChef has entered the wacky ‘It’s a Knock Out’ stage. The three finalists are being set some fairly arbitrary ‘tough’ tasks such as last night when they were shipped out to Jodhpur in order to cook for some royal toffs in 120 degrees of heat. No doubt tonight they’ll be forced to run around the kitchen …
Baked Herbed Ricotta with Roasted Tomatoes
The plan is at some stage to make our own Ricotta from the whey left over from Yumblog Amalgamated Dairy Industries yoghurt-making enterprise. However I suspect the quantities involved will be minute and certainly a lot smaller than our massive combined appetites.
Welsh Rarebit
Spelled rarebit. Pronounced rabbit. Tastes delicious. Incidentally this cheesy delight can also be used in the construction of an Illinois delicacy known as a Horseshoe Sandwich (aka Freedom Sandwich). To make one simply take a thick slice of toasted bread and top with a quantity of cooked meat (hamburger/deep fried pork tenderloin/chicken/etc.). Next cascade with a generous portion of chips/freedom …
Jamie Oliver’s Amazing Pukka Baked Beans
It seems every house I visit these days has a copy of ‘Jamie at Home‘ lurking in or around the kitchen. Personally I am not a great fan of the ‘celebrity chef’ cookbook, although truth be told this is a very well produced and photographed book and one of the best currently doing the rounds. I just can’t make my …
Sweet Potato & Goat’s Cheese Rosti
In the U.S. the sweet potato is incorrectly referred to as a yam. But there again it’s the land where they call aubergines – eggplants, courgettes – zucchini, biscuits – cookies, jam – jelly, jelly – jello, and torture – water boarding. That said, it’s not technically a potato either. It’s sweet though.
Cider Vinegar Muffins
If you came here in search of an American-style muffin to accompany your tall caramel macchiato, then you’ll be disappointed. They’re not muffins, they’re cakes. If however you are in search of an English muffin which is light and yeasty and perfect for toasting and smothering in butter, then you’re in luck. A word of warning though, this recipe is …
Bubble & Squeak Cakes with Poached Eggs
Among other things in the fridge there was half a cabbage and six eggs. Not ordinary eggs you understand, but eggs generously laid by Dolores, Fifi, Jolene and Daphne. Perfect fresh eggs with deep yellow yolks and firm whites – the likes of which you’ll not find in any supermarket. The cabbage in contrast was ordinary.
Tuna & Tomato Empanadillas
I had the yen to make some Cornish pasties, but not having all the necessary ingredients and not wanting to brave the ugly madness that is Bethnal Green on a Saturday afternoon to get them, I made these instead.
‘Falafel’ Burger
If you like falafel and you like burgers, you’ll love this ‘falafel’ burger. Although perhaps as it is technically neither a falafel nor a burger it should be written ‘Falafel’ ‘Burger’ or perhaps ‘Falafel’ (Burger) or even “{‘Falafel’ [‘Burger’]}!”.